Being Human in the Age of AI: Co-Creating a Better Future

Preface
The age of information and technology is ending. The age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is approaching. Rapidly. As AI systems become increasingly powerful, able to perform exponentially complex computations, execute logical reasoning, and solve real world problems that many humans dedicate their lives to, such as cancer, heart disease, longevity, space travel, among countless others, what will the humans do? Most of our daily activities and work revolve around manual labor, logical thinking, and computation, at least for majority of the world’s population. In a world where AI is orders of magnitude more effective than humans in these tasks, what will be the use of humans? Will the AI slowly assume control as it is better equipped to make the most probabilistic decisions, something that humans struggle with due to our wiring of emotions and feelings? If AI ends up running the economic system, the medical and research systems, as well as performing majority of the manual labor work, will humans become obsolete?
 
Humanity's run in with an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is an unavoidable part of the human evolution story. What remains to be seen is how society and the future of humanity will be shaped with the emergence of super intelligent AI. Will AI view us how we view lower species, such as ants and primates, whose needs we have relegated to serve our own needs and our entertainment? Do we simply become subservient to the goals of AI? What if their goals do not align with humanity’s interest? Will AI ever attain full consciousness? How will we know if AI is conscious since we cannot even agree on a universal definition or come up with a way to measure/test it? What will be the purpose of human beings in this age? How can a thriving and peaceful society be created? Can we successfully balance the strengths offered by AI with the strengths inherent in humans to create a peaceful and thriving society?
 
These are some of the big questions I answer in this book. By combining scientific research in the field of AI, insights about human nature and suffering from my experience as a physician in dealing with death and disease in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs), and my lifelong dedication towards spiritual principles, I offer a vision of what future humanity can create as we learn to consciously navigate through our current phase in evolution. From research in quantum mechanics, study of consciousness, human psychology, evolutionary biology, and spirituality, we will explore underlying truths and principles that may help us create a blueprint on how to consciously guide the next step of human evolution. We will further explore what pitfalls humanity has fallen into time and time again and how we need to prepare for such pitfalls as we co-create the new artificial general intelligence (AGI).